


Askaban at Night

by CompanionoftheDoctor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Mentions of Suicide, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, askaban, mentions of child abuse, mentions of depression, sort of a charakter redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23652604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CompanionoftheDoctor/pseuds/CompanionoftheDoctor
Summary: Dolores Jane Umbridge is imprisoned in Askaban for her crimes commited during the second wizarding war. On day she gets transfered to a new cell, finds a mirror on the floor and remeberes somebody she wishes would stay forgotten.
Kudos: 2





	Askaban at Night

**Author's Note:**

> Please keep in mind that English isn't my first language so please don't be to harsh with language critisism.

She‘d found the mirror lying on the floor right after they‘d brought her to the new cell. She didn‘t know why she couldn‘t have stayed in her old one or what had happened to the former inhabitant of this one, but she didn‘t care that much about it. She had stopped caring about pretty much anything just after one week on the island.  
Other people weren‘t so fast. She could hear them weep and scream at night, their voices full of sorrow and terror. Sometimes they even said names in their sleep. Names of loved ones, names of foes, names of people they still cared about. But she hadn‘t had much to hold on to when she‘d came here and letting it go was easy enough.  
She hadn‘t touched the mirror for the first two days int he new cell. She‘d just laid on her bed, looking up to the cold, grey stones on the ceiling and not to the glimmering light the moon was casting on the broken glass on the floor. On the third day she‘d finally fallen asleep, her face turned to the small trace of the afternoon sun that was shining through the tiny, barred window that was so high up in the wall that she couldn‘t reach it to have a look outside. Not that there would be much to see except dreadful waves and a grey sky.  
When she woke up it was night and dark all around her. The first thing that came to her mind was that she‘d missed supper. That wasn‘t much of a loss, what the guards called supper was actually just a piece of bread so hard that it was bearly edible and cold stew that tasted just like the bread except that it wasn‘t dry and instead left a rotten, furry feeling on her tongue. She never really touched any of it, not because she didn‘t like it, but simply because it wasn‘t worth the effort of getting out of bed.  
For quite some time she just laid on her back, staring into the nothingness around her. Then a second thought appeared, so bright and vigorous that it almost hurt like a sudden flashlight in her eyes. Actually it wasn‘t much of a thought, more like a feeling. The feeling of drowning. She was drowning in darkness.  
He fear of the dark was the only thing that had become worse in her time here and not dull. She‘d had it ever since those days in the forbidden forest, where everything had been dark and creeping, out to get her, hurt her and kill her.  
She got up and stumbled to the bars of her cell, desperately gasping for breath and relieve like the drowning woman she was. When she pressed her face against the rusty metall she should be able to see the torch at the end of the corridor like always. She should be. It should be there. But today it wasn‘t. All that was waiting for her was pitch black.  
The darkness outside of her cell felt even more definite and inevitable than the one inside and she could almost feel the coats of the Dementors sweeping by inches away from her face. She stumbled backwards, whimpering for the first time in months as she felt the familiar cold of the Dementors around her reaching for her heavily pounding heart and the lat bit of memory inside her.  
That‘s when her bare foot touched something cold and smooth on the floor. She stopped and reached down, palpating the rough stones until her fingers closed around the mirror. And in that very moment the moon appeared between the bars of her window and everything turned silver.  
She looked down on her hand and into the mirror. It was herself that was looking back, scraggy and drained with eyes as big as a cat‘s and long, greasy hair. She‘d always looked like a toad, at least that‘s what people had told her all the time. But now that she‘d lost all the fat and wobbling parts and the nastiness in her face the toad was gone. And what was left looked more like somebody else than Dolores Jane Umbridge. Someone she hadn‘t thought of for years, decades even and was now in that moonlit cell with her, looking just as tired and miserable as he had in the last months of his life.  
‚Danny.‘ she whispered with a hoarse voice. ‚Hello, Danny.‘  
Danny had been her younger brother, short and mischievous with green eyes and a crooked smile, always running around in the forest chasing fairies and unicorns and childhood dreams. Over time she had forgotten what his voice sounded like, how his eyes became tiny when he laughed really hard, how he would always climb on her shoulders, which was eays because they‘d almost been the same height.  
But now she remembered everything. She could even feel him standing right next to her with that stupid grin on his face. He‘d always smiled. And than he had stopped.  
For the first time in many, many years Dolores allowed herself to ask the question that had followed her since that sunny morning in June ‘69 when she had come downstairs to the bathroom and found him, arteries cut open and red blood on the white marble floor. ‚Could I have known? Could I have known what our uncle did to him? Could I have saved him?‘ Danny smiled. He could do that again now. ‚It‘s not your fault.‘ he said. ‚I missed you.‘  
‚I didn‘t. I forgot all about you. I didn‘t even go to your funeral.‘ Dolores said. ‚I don‘t even think I want to remember you now.‘ Danny raised one hand and rested it against the glass. ‚That‘s okay, Dolly. We will meet again when you are ready.‘ he promised.  
She closed her eyes and tossed the shard away as far as she could, through the bars of her window and into the night. Then, with the dazed smile of a sleepwalker, she went back to bed. ‚That‘s detention, Mr. Potter. Meet me in my office at sic.‘ she mumbled as she drifted over into the land of dreams.  
‚The minister is horrified by the state of this institution. Horrified.‘


End file.
